Will Mason
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willmasonmusic.com
Will Mason
@willmasonmusic.com
Musician and composer • assoc. professor of music, Skidmore College • “experimental yet still catchy” — New York Times • repost = 👀

willmasonmusic.com
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My latest album is out today on @newfocuslabel.bsky.social. It's called "Hemlocks, Peacocks" and features Anna Webber, Daniel Fisher-Lochhead, deVon Russell Gray, and me. I made a score follower video for the first track for those who are curious.

youtu.be/RSKcnoVlcwU?...
Will Mason - Hemlocks (score follower) feat. Anna Webber, Daniel Fisher-Lochhead, deVon Russell Gray
YouTube video by Will Mason
youtu.be
Reposted by Will Mason
From 400-year-old globes to cosmic funeral shrouds, how the Osher Map Library in Maine shows people that maps aren't just for navigation — but windows into history, culture, and how we see the world. n.pr/44Ognqv
From 400-year-old globes to cosmic shrouds: A Maine library brings maps to life
From 400-year-old globes to cosmic funeral shrouds, how the Osher Map Library in Maine shows people that maps aren't just for navigation — but windows into history, culture, and how we see the world.
n.pr
December 7, 2025 at 11:29 AM
Reposted by Will Mason
The entire debate over birthright citizenship is anti-constitutional because the purpose, intent, and text of the 14th Amendment were designed to foreclose any argument about who counts as an American citizen.
December 5, 2025 at 6:54 PM
Reposted by Will Mason
A wealth tax is a big tent policy unless the only people you care about are billionaires.
Gov. @gavinnewsom says he disagrees with Mayor @zohrankmamdani about the need for a wealth tax on billionaires, which he is “adamantly against” - says Dems are a “big tent party” with both views.

More on the CA proposal: www.sacbee.com/news/politic...
December 5, 2025 at 3:34 AM
Reposted by Will Mason
@willmasonmusic.com et al - newfocusrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/hemloc...

I guess I tend to think of (western) microtonal music as programmed or else intricately, painstakingly laid out and performed in the manner of automatons. the boldly evident physicality of the (v impressive, understated)--
Hemlocks, Peacocks, by Will Mason Quartet
7 track album
newfocusrecordings.bandcamp.com
December 3, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Reposted by Will Mason
Incredible optics here, really underscores it all.
Trump, continued: "What the Somalian people have done to Minnesota is not even believable. It’s not even believable. And a lot of it starts with the governor. A lot of it starts with Barack HUSSEIN Obama, because that’s when people started coming in... They want to kiss our country good night."
December 3, 2025 at 9:49 PM
Reposted by Will Mason
After becoming a congressional leader, a politician’s stock portfolio beats out those of peers by 47 (!!!) percentage points a year through trades timed around bills and firms that later get government contracts

www.nber.org/papers/w34524

via @florianederer.bsky.social
December 3, 2025 at 1:42 AM
Reposted by Will Mason
This is an ethnic cleansing campaign
December 3, 2025 at 12:27 AM
Reposted by Will Mason
Embrace winter’s sadness with flowery riffs; listen to wimpy black metal. flowingdownward.bandcamp.com/album/radio-...
Radio Nocturna Vol 2: Voces del pasado, by APRS
7 track album
flowingdownward.bandcamp.com
December 2, 2025 at 10:30 PM
Reposted by Will Mason
a lot of people debating the merits of that dogshit essay meanwhile the girl’s mom is retweeting demands to ban all trans people from teaching at any level. it’s forest for the trees shit
December 1, 2025 at 4:42 AM
Reposted by Will Mason
I don’t think this guy actually knows what the first amendment protects? The first amendment certainly doesn’t protect a student from receiving a bad grade on an essay we all can read and judge as awful, that’s horseshit.
December 1, 2025 at 5:40 PM
Reposted by Will Mason
“The problem is, there’s generally no going back once prices rise. And for good reason.”

I really wish we would have had more stories like this ahead of last year’s election, when it seemed people were mad about inflation because prices didn’t go down

www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...
Why you may not want lower prices as much as you think you do
Though Americans might be clamoring for relief on groceries, housing and energy costs, economists say there’s a bigger downside to falling prices.
www.washingtonpost.com
November 30, 2025 at 11:03 PM
Reposted by Will Mason
[ Gasping for air ]
November 30, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Reposted by Will Mason
idk not to mention how very nuanced and normal the actual response here was
November 29, 2025 at 3:45 PM
Reposted by Will Mason
OU has put the professor here on administrative leave:
November 30, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Reposted by Will Mason
👀 when it comes to "harassment" and student protest, northwestern has given the trump administration what appears to be a veto over changes in policy: "Northwestern shall not revise or modify these policies and procedures without the consent of the Assistant Attorney General".

horrible.
You've heard of the Friday night news dump. Here's the Friday night of Thanksgiving wknd dump. For special circumstances, like when the faculty assembly votes 595-4 against paying to end a shakedown and you do it anyway. Link to agreement here: bulkmail.northwestern.edu/trk/click?re...
BREAKING: Northwestern University has agreed to pay the U.S. Treasury $75 million, over the course of three years as part of an agreement with the federal government to restore funding and end investigations into the university

Full statement from NU below:
November 29, 2025 at 1:24 AM
Reposted by Will Mason
If the U.S. was at war, Pete Hegseth's order would be a war crime, a military lawyer said. Instead, it might just be murder. wapo.st/49KbUJ1
Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a verbal order to kill all crew members in the Sept. 2 strike on a suspected drug boat. Navy SEALs fired a second missile.
www.washingtonpost.com
November 28, 2025 at 6:07 PM
Reposted by Will Mason
This is a really sick story.

From everything I know, Boston’s Logan Airport is a legitimately dangerous place to travel through.

abcnews.go.com/US/19-year-c...
November 27, 2025 at 9:46 PM
Reposted by Will Mason
The Trump administration has reacted to a small scale lone wolf attack by in DC announcing a sweeping collective punishment, using the organs of government to heap blame on partisan rivals, and potentially dissuading anyone from collaborating with US forces abroad for a generation.
CIA statement about the Afghan man identified as the gunman who shot two National Guardsmen in Washington
November 27, 2025 at 2:38 PM
Reposted by Will Mason
The best metal of 2025 as selected by Spyros and me for @popmatters.com.

Banger list all around ft Antiversum, @allieinchains.bsky.social, Mendoza/fluke-mogul/Pérez (@burningambulance.bsky.social), @gonemage.bsky.social, OvO, Retromorphosis, Stygian Ruin...

🔗 www.popmatters.com/best-metal-a...
November 26, 2025 at 11:29 AM
Reposted by Will Mason
March 1, 2025 at 7:32 AM
Reposted by Will Mason
"The most stirring contemporary defenses of liberalism, like Elizabeth Anderson’s 𝘏𝘪𝘫𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘥, demonstrate a combined commitment to liberalism’s merits along with an honest understanding of where we have gone wrong. Unfortunately, many others adopt a small-c conservative defensiveness."
Liberalism or Inertia? Cass Sunstein's "Liberalism: In Defense of Freedom"
Cass Sunstein’s book adopt a small-c conservative defensiveness that belies a now requisite rejuvenating liberal imagination.
www.liberalcurrents.com
November 26, 2025 at 5:31 PM
Reposted by Will Mason
A reminder, as Trump boasts about having "never worked so hard in my life" that he is playing golf more often now than he did in his first term and in less than five years has already played golf more often than Obama did in eight. www.pbump.net/o/an-officia...
November 26, 2025 at 2:06 PM
when I am utterly exhausted, as I am now, I tend to pull arcane vocab words out of my ass (to wit: arcane; not to wit: ass), and I just told a student their synth tone was xeric and what are they going to do go "ah ok cool yea i was also thinking it was xeric"
November 24, 2025 at 10:00 PM
Reposted by Will Mason
A @nytimes.com investigation has found that state prison guards have been credibly accused of engaging in such behavior — putting inmates in restraints and then assaulting them — far more often than was previously known.
Restrained, Beaten, Asphyxiated: New York Prison Guards’ Brutality Grows
www.nytimes.com
November 24, 2025 at 1:50 PM